Friar Marcos Dardón arrived in Central America with the Spanish conquistadors and actively participated in the future province of The Mercy of Guatemala, created shortly after his death.

Around 1550, at the request of the lawyer López Cerrato, president of the Audiencia, Friar Marcos promoted the foundation of the houses of Gracia de Dios, Tencoa and Valladolid of Comayagua; the three in the Honduran region, so that their religious were in charge of the doctrine of the natives.

The first two were founded by Friar Nicolás del Valle, who in 1565 presented a memorial to the Council of the Indies, requesting help for the three convents, where the Mercedarians, "who preach the holy gospel", have not enjoyed royal protection.

In 1765 the Bourbon reforms of the Spanish Crown were published, which sought to recover the royal power over the colonies and increase tax collection.

That same year four sub-delegations of the Royal Treasury were created in San Salvador, Ciudad Real, Comayagua and León and the administrative political structure of the Kingdom of Guatemala changed to fifteen provinces.

For this reason, in 1778 he ordered the transfer of the Jesús Nazareno de la Merced, along with the image of the Virgin, to force the Mercedarians to move.

The transfer was painful, because the indigenous people in charge of the work took a long time to pick it up and the Antiguan parishioners prayed and wept for the loss of the image while they waited.

When Jesús de la Merced left in a box, the people accompanied him to the Ánimas sentry box on the outskirts of the city; a devotee carried the cross of the image to San Lucas, a town that is fifteen kilometers from the Mercedarian convent in Antigua Guatemala.25 After stopping in San Lucas Sacatepéquez and Mixco, the images finally arrived in Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción by night, and the Christ was received by the Franciscan friars and then by the Mercedarians, to be deposited in a wooden frame on the land where the Mercedarian church of the new city was to be built.

A few years later, Archbishop Cayetano Francos y Monroy authorized the operation of three parishes interim that bore the name of their predecessors: "San Sebastián", "Candelaria" and "Los Remedios", where the largest number of religious art works that remained in Antigua Guatemala was kept.

This image was transferred to the parish of San Sebastián in 1804 and then, definitively, to the Iglesia de la Merced, where it has been since then and where it has become the most symbolic of Holy Week in Antigua Guatemala.

"Visiting the places where Saint Brother Pedro walked and knowing his legacy such as social works, is part of the learning of the pilgrimage.